Category Archives: Rescue Happenings

A Home With Friends

Dogs & Other Animals, Rescue Happenings, , , ,

My post last week about Maizie generated lots of interest. You can read it here if you missed it. A Heart of Gold

Rest assured Maizie enjoyed her life here. She became a permanent member of our family the day we received her diagnosis of kidney failure and found out her time was limited. She loved going out to the pasture with the other dogs and coming back in to sleep on the dog bed.

As many of our animals do, she seemed to enjoy the Christmas tree. I think it has something to do with the lights. Even with kidney failure and occasional infections, she never messed in the house. She was such a good girl. And she always greeted me with a smile when I opened the door to let her back inside.

Maizie developed a special bond with our cat Lacey. They could often be found sleeping together. Maizie passed before Lacey. When Lacey passed a year or two later, I buried her with Maizie’s ashes in our little pet cemetery. She earned this right as a part of our family and the two friends were together again.

Maizie’s time here was happy. She was only visibly failing for the last few days. The rest of the time she enjoyed doing her goofy gallop around the yard with the other dogs, playing, going on walks, getting lots of petting, and sleeping on a warm bed with her friends. Good dog Maizie, good dog.

A Heart of Gold

Dogs & Other Animals, Rescue Happenings, , ,

This is Maizie. She was our foster dog seven years ago and passed to the Rainbow Bridge after spending a little over a year with us. She had a heart of gold. Following is what I wrote at that time.

Dear Person Who Abandoned this Senior Dog,

Maizie was found by the pound and when they sent you a letter to come and get her, you did not come. She spent 30 days in the pound kennel waiting for you before the efforts of two rescue groups brought her to our house as a foster dog. Today we discovered that she has kidney failure and will live out the rest of her life with us however long that may be. What lesson am I supposed to learn from this? Perhaps to have compassion for you and not be judgemental? I will work on that.

I know that I have been blessed to know this dog who is sweet, loving, and grateful for every bit of attention. She smiles at us constantly and is one of the happiest dogs I have seen. Occassionally she will try to play and has a small, joyful hop to her step. Our lives have been enriched by knowing this kind dog.

My dreams will be sweeter knowing that I have helped and loved this girl. May you be able to sleep at all.

Welcome Home!

Dogs & Other Animals, Rescue Happenings, ,

This is the newest member of our family! Meet Claire. She has been our foster dog for the past 6 months so if you know us, she’s not new around here.

I honestly did make a good effort to adopt her out. Our rescue isn’t doing home checks right now because of the pandemic. Over the past three months I did speak to previous adopters about her but the time and situation wasn’t right for any of them.

Mercifully, after speaking to the last potential adopter last week, they decided the timing was not right. I say mercifully because after I got off the phone with them before they had decided, I fell apart at the thought of Claire leaving us.

I don’t know if I’ve changed? Or I lost my edge after taking a year and a half fostering break after Zekie came to us? Or if it’s due to the fact that I’m home all the time now? Or if it’s just Claire. But the thought of her leaving is unbearable.

This does mean that we are on a moratorium from long term fostering for now. We will still be available for fostering those shelties that only need one or two weeks here.

So Claire is home! As you can see, she is quite happy about this. And so am I.

A Day in My Life

Cooking, Country Life, Dogs & Other Animals, Rescue Happenings, , , ,

Today was one of those days where I got a lot of necessary things done. Those things that you don’t like to do, but it feels good to have them done.

Our township provides a dumpster that is at the township garage for one weekend each year for spring cleanup. Anyone in the township can use it to dispose of large items, until it is full. And you need to get there quick, before it gets full. Today was the start of that weekend. I hauled two loads up to the dumpster for disposal, consisting of an old, musty Christmas tree, a couple pieces of decomposing wicker furniture, and various odds and ends.

This afternoon, I spent a few hours doing various forms of paperwork for our dog rescue group. I worked on some financial paperwork, some filing, and some educational material. Not fun, but things that are necessary.

And since I was on a roll doing dog stuff, I decided to give three of our dogs their annual DHLPPP-type shots that were in the refrigerator. Followed by cleaning litter boxes and picking up poop outside. I clean up our dog yard every time the dogs go outside now, because we have two who apparently consider themselves to be connoisseurs of poop. Even so, I sometimes run around with the scoop yelling “drop it” while chasing the offender. It’s a fine line between following the defecating dog around closely enough to get there before one of the other dogs grabs the result, but not so closely as to interrupt the dog doing his business. Such is my life.

As a reward for a productive day, I made Indonesian stir fried noodles for supper. Noodles, vegetables, and fish. Yum!

Just a day in my life.

Afternoon Recess

Country Life, Dogs & Other Animals, Rescue Happenings, ,

Afternoon Recess-Cassius, Zekie, & Shelby

Playground Attendant-Shelby

Goofy New Kid-Claire

Class Clown-Cassius

Seniority Has It’s Priveleges

Dogs & Other Animals, Rescue Happenings, ,
Nikki, 12 years old

Seniority has its privileges.

Nikki sleeps upstairs in our bedroom now. She previously slept downstairs with the other dogs.

Only Zekie slept upstairs with us. He sleeps in a crate. We moved him upstairs only because he carried on so terribly due to his separation anxiety that we couldn’t sleep. Once he moved to a crate next to me, he sleeps like a baby.

Nikki has been barking to wake us up at first light recently. It started when foster dog Claire arrived. Claire was getting us up and then Nikki followed suit. Claire doesn’t get us up as early now. But Nikki is still trying.

Nikki has only minimal hearing left, so you can’t yell at her to be quiet. She barks, then stops to listen. Hearing nothing, she barks again. And so on. Since moving upstairs a few days ago, she has been quiet.

Ah, the joys of having a senior dog. I wouldn’t trade them for anything!

Good Boy, Zekie!

Country Life, Dogs & Other Animals, Rescue Happenings, , ,

It’s been a while since I’ve given an update on Zekie. I realized recently that it’s because he hasn’t been as much trouble.

In fact, if we don’t take him on walks, he’s barely any trouble at all. We do have the mega security crate for when we go away and leave him home. I wouldn’t want to chance this without that crate. It has been a life saver. Literally.

But when we are around home, Zekie’s worst behavior is licking the floor, or the dog bed, or my pants. His insecurity manifests this way. You can’t scold him for licking. Since it is a result of insecurity, the more you tell him to stop, the worse it gets. A squirt bottle does help a little. Both result in our house getting wet though.

Zekie has improved to the point where we can go outside for bits of time and leave him loose in the house. If my husband goes to his workshop or to get wood, he takes Zekie with him since he is good on these trips. He can even spend hours in the workshop with power tools running.

Zekie is still leash reactive during walks. He does pretty well with walkers now, but still barks ferociously at other dogs. Even though he is fine with other dogs coming in our house.

Whenever we are inside, Zekie causes no trouble. He no longer gets into things. He doesn’t chew inappropriately. He doesn’t steal our things. He no longer jumps onto the dining room table to watch us through the window when we go outside. He does lay on the back of the couch beside the door to wait for our return, but this is rather endearing.

We first noticed Zekie’s improvement when we got our new foster dog about a month ago. It was the new dog stealing and chewing things and barking at us. When someone improves their behavior ever so slightly over a long period of time, it is not readily noticed. This has been the case with Zekie. He’s not perfect, but what an improvement.

Good boy, Zekie!

Couch Dynamics

Country Life, Dogs & Other Animals, Rescue Happenings, ,

Sometimes dogs know how to use furniture as well as people do. Our dogs all try to get the best seat. The best seat is generally considered to be beside mom on the couch. The next best snoozing real estate is considered to be one of our two giant, cushy dog beds, followed by the second couch in the family room.

Last choice is the couch in the other room or on the rug. They will try to make another dog move by standing over them or trying to fit into a space so small that they end up partially laying on one of the others, before they will lay on the rug.

It’s fun to watch the dynamics play out and see who ends up where. The outcome varies and you just never know what will happen.

Never Enough Friends

Country Life, Dogs & Other Animals, Rescue Happenings, , ,

Foster girl Claire has made good progress in her relationships with cats. At first she found them to be exciting and something to be run after. She soon moved on to standing and watching the cats run by, but not giving chase.

Orange Kitty has been instrumental in this new behavior. He is so laid back that he doesn’t even move now when Claire approaches. She seems to seek him out for company.

You can never have too many friends.

Nap Time?

Dogs & Other Animals, Rescue Happenings, ,

This afternoon was nap time. Foster dog Claire joined me.

Then she wanted to sniff me.

Nap time got even better when Zekie joined us. That is unless you wanted to actually nap!